In a move geared towards supporting local cinemas in their reopening efforts, distributor Kino Lorber has announced that theaters programming Abel Ferrara’s documentary The Projectionist will be able to keep 100 percent of sales from the film.
The Projectionist has as its subject Nicolas “Nick” Nicolaou, a veteran NYC exhibitor who over the decades has witnessed stark changes in New York City’s cinema landscape. He currently owns and operates Cinema Village in Manhattan; Alpine Cinemas in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; and Cinemart in Forest Hills, Queens.
There is no set, unified release date for The Projectionist, explains a representative from Kino Lorber—rather, it will be available to program at physical theaters as they reopen across the United States. Notes the representative, “We wanted our first film for physical theaters from us to be a doc about the love of the moviegoing experience.” Theaters which screen The Projectionist in their space will be able to keep all of the profits. Kino Lorber, in a statement, also encourages theaters “to add conversations with its theater staff and programmers to its screenings of The Projectionist as a way to welcome back their audiences when they can open safely, pull back the curtain, and talk about why they share Nicolaou’s passion for keeping the movie theater experience alive.”
Kino Lorber was one of the first distributors to be active in the virtual-theatrical space post-shutdown, launching Kino Marquee in March—shortly after the release of their critically acclaimed Bacurau, the theatrical run of which was cut short by the pandemic—and subsequently expanding it to additional cinemas. Said CEO Richard Lorber in an interview with Boxoffice Pro in March, “This is intended as an interim provision to cover this crisis period. That’s with the hope that in some weeks, probably months, theaters will reopen, and people will go back to smelling the popcorn and hopefully buying it. We would have fulfilled a service in the stop-gap.”
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